It’s common for business leaders to want to go to market to hire a full-time HR Manager when they need to scale their people operation. However, a more effective solution may be engaging with an HR consulting firm to bring in an interim HR Manager to run your human resources department. This blog outlines the benefits of engaging with an HR consultant rather than going to market to find your next head of HR.
Fewer Hiring Barriers
In a competitive job market, you want to move quickly to attract top talent and place them in key positions in the business. However, if you don’t have a competent HR professional, recruiting and interviewing may fall to an inexperienced person in your organization or someone who can’t prioritize recruiting because they have responsibilities related to their actual job. Even if your stop-gap solution of having an office manager or business leader run recruitment is effective and they are skilled in interviewing, it makes more sense to have interim HR manage the candidate experience from beginning to end. Hiring your next employee isn’t only the recruitment process, it’s also the administrative work associated with bringing a new team member on board. It’s inefficient to break those tasks up. Rather, your interim HR resource can own the employee lifecycle. If the primary reason you partner with an outsourced HR consultant is to focus on recruiting, it’s their primary responsibility, and they are able to put their full effort behind recruitment efforts. They can move nimbly between different positions and candidates, develop effective recruiting strategies, and engage your line managers in interviewing best practices, like behavioral interviewing.
No Long Term Commitment
Although we are confident once you work with us at Red Clover, you’ll want to retain us as your preferred HR partner, working with an interim HR Manager may not be a permanent solution. For example, you may need someone to ensure HR business continuity while your internal employee goes on leave. Another reason why people often seek interim HR support is their internal resources aren’t skilled in certain areas, so we work with businesses as their interim HR Manager to supervise the junior team member, contribute to their learning, and skill them up in HR process development. Then, once the internal resource has gone through appropriate learning, we roll off the engagement, having left your organization (and your employee) better than we found it. We also recognize that companies may eventually want a full-time internal resource, but will benefit from partnering with our skilled consultant team to build the HR function and develop strong people processes. To that end, as part of our interim HR engagements, after we’ve successfully executed our change management initiatives, we help the client source their next head of HR and engage in a robust knowledge transfer while remaining on board, in a reduced capacity, to onboard the candidate of choice through their first 90 days.
Fill Employment Gaps When Needed
As much as you hope your well-performing employees will stay with your organization for a long-time, it is inevitable that some people will leave. Having an interim HR manager allows you to fill positions quickly. A devoted HR resource can take feedback from the exit interview, apply it to the revision of the job description, run a timely vacancy debrief, and turn around the listing quickly to go to market. With their speed and efficiency, they are equipped with fresh insight to fill the position with the ideal candidate.
Additionally, the right outsourced HR solution is equipped to help your organization undergo significant change like an organizational restructuring. They help you plan for any resulting vacancies or gaps in service if you need to make adjustments to your current workforce as your business evolves. A change management-focused HR firm also develops all appropriate communications to your workforce, guaranteeing a smooth transition and proactively preparing for any negative outcomes from a restructuring.
Cost-Effective and Flexible
Working with an outsourced, interim HR Manager provides an overall cost-saving to your business because you’re not paying benefits or payroll tax costs that you would normally have to pay for an internal hire. Also, as your company’s HRs needs change, an external consultant can either increase their hours or reduce their time given the ebb and flow of the employee experience. Or, as Red Clover has done in the past, we’ve built a strong HR foundation through process creation for a client, which required three or four days of on-site work. As we’ve trained their line managers and leadership on how to execute the initiatives we’ve developed, we are able to scale back the amount of time we spend with the organization because of a thorough knowledge transfer with key internal resources. Another benefit of working with an HR consulting firm is that they can leverage the different areas of expertise of their assembled team. You may be able to work with one expert consultant to revolutionize your recruiting and interview process, and then swap that person out for the firm’s compensation expert once you need to devote effort towards compensation planning, salary increases, and a workable bonus plan.
Are you Ready to Hire an Interim HR Manager?
As your workforce and company grow, you can only manage employee lifecycle processes so long before it becomes untenable, especially if human resources isn’t your area of expertise. Your gut may tell you it’s time to hire a full-time HR manager, but it may also be time you partner with an HR consulting firm to serve as your interim HR resource. It’s an innovative, cost-effective, and flexible solution to developing a strong foundation for your human resources function. Interested in learning how Red Clover can help you scale your business while serving as your interim HR resource? Reach out today!
